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I am sure that this post is going to be politically incorrect. Let me say at the outset that I respect everybody and nothing is meant to be derogatory here.

Once a new colleague joined to our team. I went to talk to him and to welcome him. He was obviously from Kerala and so I said “So u r a Mallu?” as a part of my conversation. Afterwards another colleague pulled me aside and said that I should have not called him a “Mallu” since it is considered derogatory. Ok – this I did not know. So I went back the the first person and apologized. I told him “I used the word Mallu just to imply that you are from Kerala. I was not aware that this term is not considered respectful. I am sorry.”. He replied – “So what? I am a Mallu!”.

The real question is are we too sensitive about racial sterotyping? What if we call a person by an obvious connotation like black, mallu, paki, etc? Is it essential that these words are derogatory? Are we being too sensitive?

Ofcourse, whenever I am aware that a word is considered politically incorrect – I do not use it. But still the question does not go away – as a culture are we too sensitive?